What the heck is Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED)?

The ultimate goal of crime prevention is to reduce the risk of being a victim. In order to accomplish this effectively, it is important to remove opportunities for a criminal to take advantage of you or your property. You are attempting to prevent either victimization or criminalization by presenting an unattractive target to the criminal. This effort at removing opportunities is often referred to as target hardening. Target hardening can be as complex as installing a high tech alarm system or taking a self-defense course, to something as simple as locking your door.

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is a more in-depth method of crime prevention.  CPTED - What Is It?  The CPTED concept is that the proper design and effective use of the built environment can lead to the reduction of crime and improvement in the quality of life.  CPTED reviews involve four overlapping strategies:  Natural Surveillance; Territorial Reinforcement; Natural Access Control; and Target Hardening.

CPTED Concepts & Strategies:

NATURAL SURVEILLANCE – Is a design concept intended to allow intruders and offenders to be easily viewable to people passing the property and to those using the property.

NATURAL ACCESS CONTROL – This strategy is intended to decrease the opportunity for offending by denying access to a crime target and increasing the perception of risk to the offender. 

TERRITORIAL REINFORCEMENT – Is a strategy to create and/or extend the property’s sphere of influence, which is the perception that someone is in control of the area.  This strategy distinguishes what is private space from public space by using landscaping, pavement designs, signage and fences.

MAINTENANCE – Allows for the continued use of a space for its intended purpose, serves as an additional expression of ownership, and prevents reduction of visibility from landscaping overgrowth and obstructed or inoperative lighting.

Basically, if you make an area friendlier to the general public (non-criminals), it makes the same area unfriendly to the criminal.

Officer Larry Jacobs is the Crime Prevention Officer for the Sandy Springs Police Department.  He can be reached directly at ljacobs@sandyspringsga.gov.